Review of Ancient Aliens S15E10 "The Mystery of Skinwalker Ranch"

On Tuesday, the History Channel will launch its newest attempt to clone The Curse of Oak Island, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, which will follow Ancient Aliens talking head and former Rocket City Rednecks star Travis Taylor and a team of investigators hired by ranch owner Brandon Fugal as they attempt to probe the Utah property’s supposedly paranormal secrets. The show is the brainchild of Ancient Aliens and Curse of Oak Island executive producer Kevin Burns, and it is produced by Burns’s company, Prometheus Entertainment, which also produces the other two shows. Naturally, Burns couldn’t resist devoting this hour of Ancient Aliens to promoting the new show. However, I am not in the business of providing free advertising or celebrating a new addition the History Channel’s family of anti-science programs, especially not one from an executive who actively put his staff at risk from coronavirus to churn out more pseudohistory with the argument that his young staff shouldn’t be concerned about the disease. Therefore, as I did last week, I will only highlight the bullet points of claims I feel it is important to have a public record of.

Taylor took to social media over the weekend to tease what he claims are amazing revelations from his investigation of Skinwalker Ranch. His testimony is scarcely credible since he has happily spouted whatever nonsense Kevin Burns required of him for Ancient Aliens. For example, in 2018 he talked approvingly of claims that aliens built megastructures on the far side of the moon. On Oak Island, he falsely alleged that the island had been seeded with stones in the shape of the constellation Taurus, a segment reused in an Oak Island-Ancient Aliens cross-promotion last year. Eventually, the number of false claims someone makes for fortune and fame compromises my trust in his honesty.
 
I have no interest in playing along with their coy game of teasing out endless mysteries in what is now the History Channel shared universe of paranormal promotion. So, I’ll tell you what I know and that the show will take a whole season (or, more likely, many seasons) to reveal. As most readers know, since I mentioned it a few weeks ago, I spoke with Skinwalker Ranch owner Brandon Fugal about the ranch and its mysteries for more than an hour. He told me I could ask him anything, so I asked him about the evidence collected for the show. The evidence broke down into (a) lights in the sky, (b) anomalous electromagnetic readings, and (c) claims that visitors to the ranch suffered unexplained medical maladies. While Fugal did not feel that the evidence conclusively demonstrated anything unearthly (specifically, he said there was no proof of aliens), but also did not dismiss the notion either, Taylor happily sees proof of a nonhuman intelligence at work. What. A. Surprise.
 
I also asked Fugal what explanation for the anomalies he and his investigators were examining. He told me that one possibility under serious consideration (though, he stressed, not the only one) is that these anomalies are energy spillover from another dimension, and that the ranch is a gateway to a parallel universe, perhaps an afterlife dimension where consciousness goes after death. You will recognize this speculative idea as one that Hal Puthoff and his friends like Jacques Vallée have been going on about for four decades or so. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that the afterlife is a physical, material place you could enter through a door or that UFOs are space poltergeists on loan from heaven.
 
So much for the secret of Skinwalker Ranch—just the typical paranormal hotspot claims familiar since the Victorian era, dressed up in more scientific guise and now imagined to be unique. I discussed the ranch in more detail when I reviewed Hunt for the Skinwalker in 2018, so read that for background. There is no point in repeating myself.

Segment 1

• Jeremy Corbell of Hunt for the Skinwalker and Travis Taylor of Secret of Skinwalker Ranch both appear to make assertions without evidence.
• George Knapp claims that Franciscan monks reported UFOs over the ranch’s skies in the colonial period. I have not heard this, and no citations are given. (Skinwalker fetishists, citing Hunt for the Skinwalker by George Knapp and Colm Kelleher, allege Silvestre Vélez de Escalante described seeing a fireball in 1776 over the site of the future ranch, but I could not find that passage in his published journal or any reference to the future ranch site upon cursory review, though I could not read the whole thing in the commercial break. Knapp and Kelleher report the claim only from hearsay from Junior Hicks, a retired teacher, and make no effort to confirm the story.)
  
• Giorgio Tsoukalos calls the ranch the “Disneyland of the paranormal,” which is sadly too true now that it is a reality TV show location.
  
• The show alleges that “Navajo witch-doctors” cursed Skinwalker Ranch and that the rival Utes refuse to enter the ranch because of the curse.
• George Knapp repeats his many hearsay claims about the ranch’s history.
• Interviews with ranch employees promote the upcoming series with ominous implications but no evidence to support them.

 
Segment 2

• The second segment lists various paranormal occurrences said to have occurred due to ranch poltergeists, but which lack evidence and are prima facie unconvincing.
• Segments from the upcoming show are presented to promote the new series, and the new show’s stars discuss their unconvincing supposed paranormal experiences, including bumps, imaginary voices, etc.
• Lynn Picknett claims all supernatural phenomena at the ranch are interconnected and attributable to a single evil poltergeist.
• The show compares this mischievous poltergeist to trickster gods and alleges that such beings come from another dimension; pieces from the material used in last week’s shape-shifter episode are recycled here, sometimes nearly point-for-point.
• Ancient Aliens claims that “primitive” art from Native Americans proves the ranch connects to a parallel universe, which is somehow also “the stars.”

Segment 3

• The third segment describes a sighting of a supposed fireball, complete with cheesy CGI recreation.
• Sightings of orbs, poltergeists, and alien visitations are discussed and then alleged to be a singular paranormal phenomenon of unknown origin.
• Knapp alleges that former residents of the ranch saw an extinct dire wolf, and the show therefore claims that the ranch’s interdimensional portal also allows for time travel.
  
• All of this bullshit is based on hearsay and rumor, without a shred of physical evidence presented to support any of these claims. I guess we’re all supposed to tune in to the next seven to eleven seasons of Secret of Skinwalker Ranch as they slowly tease out the imagined evidence.

Segment 4

• The fourth segment discusses Robert Bigelow’s efforts to investigate Skinwalker Ranch for proof that nonhuman intelligences are using portals to pop into Utah for a vacation.
  
• The various talking heads keep asserting that astounding things that defy explanation happen at the ranch, but no one seems to actually share any of these, much less proof of them.
• Ancient Aliens then rehearses Bigelow’s involvement with the Pentagon’s UFO program, which funneled money to Bigelow to “investigate” from Skinwalker Ranch.
• A secondhand story claims that a mesa opened up and a UFO flew inside. Naturally, no one who witnessed such a happening says anything about it.
• Again, the portal to another dimension is asserted to be the only logical answer to the ranch’s mysteries.

Segment 5

• The fifth segment has Knapp relate secondhand that “Ph.D.-level people” claimed to see a ball of light stretch into a tunnel, from which a “humanoid figure” 8-feet tall walked out. Despite this arrival, somehow the Ph.D.-level people did not photograph the event, nor did they think to, just maybe, track the interdimensional being as it walked away. Conclusion: Another stupid story.
  
• Quantum physics is invoked to allege Skinwalker Ranch is a portal from “other realms of existence.”
• The show alleges ancient monuments are also portals to other dimensions, and Caroline Cory fantasizes that Earth is covered in a grid of portals to other dimensions.
• Even the narrator recognizes that all of these fanciful claims are based on “tales” rather than facts.
• The narrator asks if “we” should risk investigating the “dangerous” ranch and provoking otherworldly beings. Since his boss is running a show based on investigating the ranch, I guess we know the answer, you pompous pricks with your portentous nonsense.

Segment 6

• The final segment covers the sale of Skinwalker Ranch to Brandon Fugal, which George Knapp alleges occurred due to the supernatural “danger,” to which—uh-huh. Sure.
  
• Fugal describes buying the ranch but omits that Hal Puthoff, now of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, facilitated the deal and remains the Holy Spirit hovering over the interpretation of it. He and Jacques Vallée pioneered the interdimensional interpretation of UFOs.
• Most of the segment plugs the new show and all the many ways Fugal has investigated the ranch and found, by his own admission, nothing conclusive.
  
• Oh, but do turn in for 10 years of waiting to get to that point, just like on Curse of Oak Island.